Somerset MPs clash over 'incompetence' of asylum system

MPs gathered in Westminster Hall on Monday (October 20) to debate two online petitions regarding asylum: one demanding an end for financial support for asylum seekers (which attracted more than 427,000 signatures) and one calling for migrant hotels to shut down and their inhabitants to be deported (which was signed by more than 257,000 people).

Gideon Amos, the Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton and Wellington, called on the government to reform the asylum system and urgently clear the processing backlogs, allowing those eligible to remain to come and work in the NHS and social care.

Sir Ashley Fox, the Conservative MP for Bridgwater, used the debate to slam the government's approach to the issue of small boats, claiming it was making the country seem "impotent".

Any online petition created on the government's website which attracts more than 10,000 signatures will receive a formal written response from the government - while those attracting more than 100,000 signatures will be formally debated in either the House of Commons or Westminster Hall.

Tony Vaughan, the Labour MP for Folkestone and Hythe, opened the debate by stating that the crux of the issue lay in how asylum seekers were treated while their applications were processed - including their ability to work and otherwise contribute to society.

He said: "The key question the two petitions ask is simple: how should we treat people while they wait for their asylum decision from the UK government?

"It is that waiting time that costs the state money, because asylum applicants cannot work for the first 12 months.

"There is a strong argument for shortening that period to around six months, as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have done, to ease pressure on the accommodation system.

"Richard Barnes, who created one of the petitions, told me that he does not want to throw asylum applicants out on to the street. He wants to end hotel use.

"He wants to speed up asylum processing. He wants us to be quicker at removing people with no right to stay."

Gideon Amos MP (Liberal Democrat, Taunton and Wellington) during the Westminster Hall asylum debate (Image: Houses of Parliament)

Speaking early in the debate, Mr Amos said: "We desperately need people to come and work in our national health service and care sector.

"The case for legally working migrants and refugees who genuinely need asylum, perhaps from Syria or Afghanistan, and the case for our communities, who want stability, have been undermined by the staggering incompetence of the asylum system.

"Waiting times for decisions have gone up to more than a year, or more like a year and a half in nearly two thirds of all cases.

"That incompetence is stirring division and disbelief, and it needs to be addressed urgently."

Mr Fox - who was recently made a Conservative whip - took a different approach, claiming his constituents were "angry" about the failure to prevent small boats from crossing the English Channel.

He said: "The number of people crossing the channel is up by 50 per cent on last year. The failure to control our borders makes our country look impotent.

"The reason that people are prepared to pay to cross the channel in a small boat is that they know that having reached Britain, there is virtually no prospect of their ever being deported.

"If we want to reduce the number of refugees in hotels and temporary accommodation, we need to change the way we deal with refugees."

Mr Fox went on to propose that the government should set a hard limit on the annual number of refugees it accepted ("exactly as we did with the Syria scheme"), with only those coming from UN refugee camps being eligible via "a safe and legal route".

He added: "At present, we have the morally repugnant situation that millions of people are sitting in refugee camps around the world with no prospect of being re-homed, while those who jump the queue and pay money to get into a small boat are given licence to live in Britain forever."

Alex Norris MP, the minister for border security and asylum, said the British people had "stepped up for people in need" and acknowledged that there was "a challenge of public confidence in our asylum system".

However, he said that the only way to change this - and to fulfil the government's promise of closing asylum hotels - was to clear the backlog of cases.

He said: "I am proud that, under this government, we are already spending £1bn less, including £500m less on hotels.

"However, I know that the British public want us to go further so that the money can be invested in the British people’s priorities, and rightly so.

"That is why we are working so hard to turn around the backlog of tens of thousands, which we inherited, by reforming each stage of the asylum system.

"We have doubled decision making, as we committed to at the election, and the backlog is already down by some 18 per cent.

"We have a statutory obligation to continue to support those whose claims are being considered, in order to prevent destitution.

"We have tightened the terms and introduced tougher sanctions for those who refuse suitable accommodation without a valid reason.

"However, we have legal and, I would argue, moral imperatives not to create mass destitution simply by turfing them out with no support."